Researchers rough it in desert to prepare for Mars exploration
Denver Post

THE DESERT WEST OF HANKSVILLE, Utah – Chemist Tony Muscatello of Westminster got lost recently on his way to Mars. It’s not hard to do in the eerie humps of red rock and concrete-colored swells of curdled dirt plopped willy-nilly like huge fallen cakes in this middle of nowhere. But like any intrepid scientist bent on visiting another planet, Muscatello backtracked until he found what he was looking for – an even stranger area that “had Martian written all over it.” Tucked in some of the weirdest landscape on Earth, he found the Mars Desert Research Station, a white cylinder that looks surprisingly like a Midwestern corn silo or – if a giant scorpion were to suddenly scuttle over a ridge – like the set of a low-budget sci-fi movie.